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Pickled Walnuts

Pickled walnuts preserved in a vinegar brine with spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Ginger and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,038 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Pickled Walnuts

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the walnuts

  1. Gather walnuts when a pin can pierce them easily.

  2. Make brine with 6 ounces of salt per quart of water; remove scum as salt dissolves.

  3. Add walnuts to brine and stir daily; change brine in 3 days.

  4. For immediate use, leave walnuts in brine for 12 days; for longer storage, drain after 9 days.

  5. Spread walnuts in single layers on flat dishes and expose to air until they turn black.

Pickle and store

  1. Prepare pickle by boiling all ingredients for 5 minutes.

  2. Place walnuts in a jar and pour hot pickle over them.

  3. Once cooled, cover with bladder and store in a dry place.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Ginger + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,038 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Pepper + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  3. Onion + mustardtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,259 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  4. Clove + macetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  5. Vinegar + mustardtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Walnuts
Main ingredient that softens in brine and darkens to black as it is exposed to air.
Vinegar
Provides the sour acidity that preserves the walnuts and gives the pickle its sharp flavour.
Salt
Draws water out of the walnuts and helps preserve them in the brine.
Mustard seeds
Adds pungent flavour to the pickle liquid.

The step that matters

Drying the walnuts until they turn black. Exposure to air is what darkens the walnut husks, so the walnuts must be spread thinly and left until fully black. Stopping early leaves them pale and under-developed in colour and flavour.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (walnut, vinegar, pepper, ginger, clove, onion, mustard):

  1. Allspicefits better
  2. Turmericfits better
  3. Cinnamonfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against walnut, vinegar, pepper, ginger, clove, onion, mustard. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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